MPs might be trying their hardest to snub the government's e-petition website, but the Cabinet Office plans to keep the service running for at least the next three years.
The leader of the House of Commons confirmed in a written answer to Parliament yesterday that the design and creation of the e-petition site had cost the …

COMMENTS

Well...

Bit hard to get their heads around I suppose...

The idea that "the people" should be allowed to steer the country in other way than putting an X on a piece of paper once every four years (and probably not even bothering to read what that X might mean).

Oh hang on, that might lead to a wholly different world for MP's... not sure that should be allowed.

Maybe it could be modified to allow people to pay a bung via paypal when you upvote an idea, perhaps that would help filll the trough for the pigs to feed on.... rekon they'd be happy if that could be made to be.

Good idea but

Getting public support requires the skills and access that the media has in trumps, for example if a newspaper runs an article on a petition, it will get significantly more votes than one which is being spread by word of mouth alone.

The only reason they want to keep it running is spin doctoring. They want to make it look like they're listening to the needs and desires of the people, and for that, the amount of money they're spending is cheap.

What the e-petitions website really needs...

80K

hmm gov take my number

I need a new job, 80k plus 32k a year to build what is really a simple site, ok sure you need to make sure it stands up security wise but any half way decent web developer could build that for a fraction of the cost.

So then your down to the hosting and maintenance, I certainly could host a sufficiently hi-spec dedicated server, with full resilience, high bandwidth, DDoS mitigation optional offload into cloud should the need ever arise. All that and still have a VERY healthy profit margin on this. Sure this was a small project but if you look at the costing to do it there's so much room for saving while still giving good money to those doing the work. It makes me shudder to think what amount of waste is on the bigger projects.

Still if they need something like this doing id be happy to do it, it would work as expected, be delivered quicker and be more reliable plus it would set me up to the point I might actually be able to afford a house in this housing market in the UK.

When a government petitions website wants to know your full address, e-mail address and phone number just to sign a simple petition that'll be ignored, you know you are no longer living in a real democracy.